


The key

by SharpestRose



Category: Quills (2000)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-08
Updated: 2011-07-08
Packaged: 2017-10-21 03:36:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/220469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What sort of person would ask the devil for salvation?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The key

A man of God, asking the devil for help? Absurd, surely. Madness. 

Ah, but he knew about madness, and he knew about evil. And he needed the help, so he asked. 

He met the Morningstar in his dreams. He lived for dreams, now, because that's where he could find them again. In the waking world he was lost, alone and lonely and without logic, but when his body was at rest his brain would fly away from this mortal coil and join up again with the ones who mattered. A holy trinity of sorts, without the holy. 

He slept a lot now, because when he slept Maddy would smooth his hair with her cool, rough palm, and kiss him lightly, and tell him she loved him. Sometimes he would hurt her, but she deserved it, he knew she did, he'd tell her that through his sobbing. His Maddy, his beautiful Maddy, had left him alone. She had to pay, for that. 

But even when he hurt her, she still smoothed his hair with her palm and loved him. 

In his dreams he would drink wine that came from a bride's stomach and talk on the nature of evil and art, just as he had once, when they'd been happy in their way, which wasn't happy at all if he was being honest with himself. But dreams don't have to tell the truth, and when he was sitting and laughing and talking and enjoying the never-dull company of his most infamous patient, he achieved a kind of peace that had left him in the hours he was not asleep. 

He felt as if they'd all forsaken him. Maddy, Sade, God. All gone. Everything that had ever mattered. Everything he'd ever loved, ripped away from him with such force that it stole his reason. 

So he found Lucifer, because he knew that the devil would be somewhere in his mind, because he was so ripe for temptation. And he stood before the devil and begged for some key to reach them when he was awake, and offered his soul up as payment. The devil smiled, and it was a smile he recognised. Satan smiled and said that he'd already given up his soul, didn't he realise? And he answered yes, I suppose I did know, I have nothing to bargain with you in that case. 

The Adversary told him not to be so hasty in leaving, that perhaps there was some key he could be given for his trouble. 

The devil handed him a quill. 

And the Abbe de Coulmier laughed. 


End file.
